Greetings,
In this week’s News Leader, there was an editorial written by Northfield Center Trustee, Paul Buescher, referencing the attempt organized by Macedonia to create a Fire District in 2006 by hiring a renown and expert consultant John Preuer. In that editorial, he urges the present Charter Commission to right a wrong. He claims that the meetings hosted by Macedonia to encourage and investigate the formation of a Fire District were for naught because our Charter stated that Macedonia could not be involved in a Fire District.
I think this is not a correct analysis and is definitely not the way I remember it. It is not correctly describing the reasons why the effort failed and a very misleading attempt to discredit us.
To the best of my knowledge, the Fire District discussions and cooperation with the consultant resulted in a report by Consultant John Preuer. That resulting documentation (after months of investigation of the Nordonia Hills Communities existing Fire Department’s capabilities and equipment) led to an opinion by John Preuer that we should apply for a Federal Grant to pursue forming a District. Evidently, the results of the study gave John positive results that would result in a successful combination of Fire Departments…. if we could fund it. John offered to write the application for that grant, but we had exhausted the fee he was paid to conduct the study and each community would need to pay an additional $1300 to him to write the application for this venture. Doing this as a small investment by each community, could result in making regionalization of our Fire Departments of the Nordonia Hills Communities being Federally Funded.
As I remember, it was at this point that Northfield Center and Sagamore bailed, although Macedonia and Northfield Villiage made efforts to fund the effort to write the application. Northfield and Macedonia very much wanted to pursue joining together and Northfield Center and Sagamore Hills, not so much.
I cannot remember Macedonia’s Charter causing the termination of the effort (and John Pruer’s expertise and services) resulting in the demise of the regionalization at that time.
I would like to ask the question “is this Editorial factually correct?”
If it is a Charter glitch, forming a Fire District or anything that would regionalize Fire Departments should be on the agenda for the regularly scheduled Charter review.
The present Charter Commission is assigned specific tasks needing immediate resolution, rather than a full Charter Review that is scheduled every 5 years. We now have a specific agenda and goals to only partially address the Macedonia Charter to correct language that resulted in a significant financial loss of tax payer dollars and disrupted good government. I am under the impression that we are not reviewing the complete Charter, nor should we be addressing this issue.
This Editorial was degrading to Macedonia in my opinion. We initiated the regionalization effort, and if there was a glaring fault in our ability to participate, I am sure it would have been addressed at the time.
Please advise.
Sent from Don Kuchta
216-536-0099
